Article

Co-Innovation at Its Best

How SAP and Partners Deliver Innovative Offerings to Customers Through the SAP App Center

by Diane Fanelli | SAPinsider, Volume 18, Issue 4

November 6, 2017

In the business world, innovation is never-ending. And with digital transformation affecting businesses everywhere, innovation is essential. Co-innovation and partnerships with digital transformation leaders can help companies avoid being disrupted. The resulting innovations enhance the capabilities of SAP’s partner and customer ecosystem by delivering a diverse network of expertise and best-in-class technologies and platforms. Hear how the SAP App Center provides a place where partners and customers can connect and transact business, simply and seamlessly.

In the business world, innovation is never-ending. We innovate to address a need or solve a problem. Ideally, we innovate to deliver a better future. And with digital transformation arguably the biggest thing expected to affect most businesses over the next five years — impacting everything from massive, global enterprises to small startups — innovation is essential.

The impact of digital transformation is enormous and businesses must innovate to survive. At the current rate of disruption, 75% of S&P 500 companies from 2012 will be replaced by 2027. That’s just 10 years from now. Yet, despite this prediction, only 27% of today’s businesses have a coherent digital strategy. Harnessing the expertise of a proven digital transformation leader can be a successful way for businesses to avoid being disrupted, so partnerships and co-innovation should be a top consideration for today’s decision makers.

Opportunities for Co-Innovation

SAP has always valued co-innovation opportunities — actively working with customers and partners to build on SAP technology and create new opportunities — but we’re seeing a recent acceleration in this area as partners and even customers look to extend their business into other areas of value and open new channels and routes to market. For example, UPS has partnered with SAP on one of the first 3D printing co-innovation relationships, with the goal of streamlining the process and mainstreaming industrial manufacturing and production. This is an exciting innovation, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Innovation demands a level of diverse expertise that can be best leveraged within a rich ecosystem of partners, where the benefits of the collective experience will generate the biggest impact. We’re seeing significant innovation from partners like Aesculap, which is developing mobile apps on SAP Cloud Platform to simplify processes and improve safety in hospitals worldwide. Deloitte Consulting is using technology to address the refugee crisis by connecting refugees with corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and career coaches who will help them get jobs and integrate into the community. And Karma Automotive is bringing ecologically sensitive products to market by delivering cloud-connected and eco-friendly cars that leverage user experiences and the power of the cloud.

Discover the Right Solution

We need our partners to deliver these and other types of innovation to customers through next-generation apps because they have the expertise, offerings, and ability to execute quickly based on customer needs. But it doesn’t end there — to facilitate app production and provide partners and customers with the best experience, we’ve developed the SAP App Center, which is designed to simplify and improve the way customers evaluate and acquire solutions from our partners.

The SAP App Center provides a powerful transactional engine designed to help partners conduct business with SAP customers (see Figure 1). Regardless of the type of SAP solution, partners can easily publish their complementary products and manage transactions — including invoice generation and payment processing — all from a single point of contact. Customers can then discover, try, buy, manage, and, in some cases, auto-provision third-party solutions and extensions across the board for both cloud applications and platforms.

Figure 1 — Via the SAP App Center, partners can easily publish their complementary products and manage transactions all from a single point of contact

Simple and Seamless Connection

As SAP strives to harness the technological, social, and economic forces transforming every industry and every line of business in every region, innovation enhances the capabilities of SAP’s partner and customer ecosystem by delivering a diverse and exciting network of expertise and best-in-class technologies and platforms. The SAP App Center completes the package by providing the place where partners and customers can connect and transact business, simply and seamlessly. This is truly co-innovation at its best. To learn more, visit www.sapappcenter.com/home.

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